Wrexham FC's top 20 signings: Andy Morrell

Andy Morrell scored 34 league goals in 45 games in the 2002–03 promotion season

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With Gary Mills busy behind the scenes building a squad capable of challenging for the title, Post Sport’s Rob Griffiths looks at the best signings ever made by Wrexham.

Over the next three weeks, Griffiths will pick the 20 best acquisitions made by the Dragons and there will also be a chance for our readers to pick their favourites too.

Today we take a look back at the career of Andy Morrell, a player who lit up the goals trail the last time Wrexham won promotion and lead the Dragons to Wembley for the first time in their history.

The last time Wrexham were to enjoy a promotion campaign, the goals of Andy Morrell were to prove absolutely crucial.

Signed by Brian Flynn on a free transfer from Newcastle Blue Star in 1998, Morrell’s start to life with the Dragons was to prove difficult, the striker never really realising his full level of potential.

However, under Denis Smith that was all to change in the 2002-03 season, Morrell’s strike partnership with Lee Trundle seeing the club finish the Third Division in third place and earn promotion.

Morrell played 109 games in total and scored 40 goals for the Dragons in his first spell at the club – a five year stint – but it was the 2002-03 season where he really shot to prominence.

Morrell’s tally of 34 league goals made him the most prolific in all four League divisions, and while helping Wrexham to promotion, also earned him a move to Coventry City.

Morrell never really ever reclaimed the form of the 2002-03 season yet still scored goals at each of the three clubs he played – Coventry (17 goals in 98 appearances), Blackpool (21 in 78) and Bury (18 in 73).

In 2010 he returned to Wrexham, and the following season was made caretaker-player manager after Dean Saunders had joined Doncaster Rovers.

With Wrexham in a good run of form and playing good football Morrell was able to steady the ship after Saunders’s departure and keep them heading in the right direction, the club narrowly missing out on automatic promotion to Fleetwood despite racking up a massive 98 points in the season, while they were edged out over two legs in the play-off semi-finals by Luton Town.

In the 2012-13 season Morrell lead his side to Wembley for the first time in the club’s history as they won the FA Trophy in a dramatic penalty shoot-out over Grimsby Town. The Dragons were to return to Wembley two months later where they faced Newport County in the play-off final, but lost 2-0 to the Welsh rivals and again miss out on promotion.

The Dragons were suffering from a seeming ‘Wembley hangover’ the following season and with the club languishing in mid-table, Morrell left the club by mutual consent.